This invention is related in general to electronic exchanges and more specifically to an electronic auction, for transferring goods, services, or other things of value.
Systems and methods for exchanging goods, services, or other things of value are employed in various demanding applications including network bandwidth trading, financial-instruments trading, online auctions, transportation logistics, pollution-credit trading, computer-network resource management, electric power allocation, aircraft-parking allocation for air carriers, and so on. Such applications often demand cost-effective readily implementable systems that can optimize benefits obtained for various participants.
For the purposes of the present discussion, an exchange may be any entity or mechanism employed to facilitate trading or transferring one or more things, such as merchandise, bandwidth, time, and so on. Hence, an auction, which may involve buying or selling goods, services, or other things, is a type of exchange.
Advancements in game theory and auction analysis have led to the development of various mechanisms to facilitate exchanging goods, services, and other things of value. For example, the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auctions have been proposed for various exchange-type applications.
Unfortunately, implementations of VCG auctions are often undesirably computationally complex and may require periodic infusions of capital for sustained operability. Such auctions are considered not budget balanced if additional infusions of capital are required.
Furthermore, certain applications may require that certain desirable auction properties, such as efficiency, be compromised. An efficient auction may be an auction that maximizes the aggregate benefit to participants, i.e., the social welfare, when participants act to benefit themselves, i.e., they bid selfishly.
In addition, conventional auction systems and methods often lack capabilities required for various real-world applications, especially applications involving exchange of combinations of items or things, such as portions of sub-links comprising a communication link.